


Bookish

by scrub456



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Art challenge, Bookish, Character Study, Day 6, Gen, Inktober, Inktober 2018, John likes to read, POV John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 20:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrub456/pseuds/scrub456
Summary: John reflects on his reading habits throughout life.





	Bookish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluebellofbakerstreet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebellofbakerstreet/gifts), [notjustmom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjustmom/gifts).



> This little story accompanies a quick colored pencil sketch I did for an Inktober prompt on Tumblr. "Bookish."

 

He's blindly fishing for his mobile under the bed when he finds it. The dust covered, dog eared spy thriller whose pages are discolored and misshapen from abuse.

There's another exactly like it, also gathering dust, with the price sticker still attached, on a crowded shelf in the sitting room. He'd picked it up on a whim, the cover and description seemed familiar (but don't they always?), but he had been certain he'd never read it.

He'd been right, too. The first copy lay discarded under his bed, abandoned certainly during some emergency. Or some harried middle of the night departure. Or some other… frantic… ventures…

Clearing his throat, he wipes the dust away with a long lost aubergine sock and tries to flatten out the badly bent cover. This one's part of a series. He's got them all, even the newest.

He's read exactly none.

Once upon a time he'd been the bookish sort. The library was safer than going home. There he could be anyone. Go anywhere. Do anything. He decided to be a doctor amongst the enormous reference tomes when he was nine and a soldier because of a lovingly arranged feature display when he was sixteen.

He'd read everything he could get his hands on. Even in university. He read it all. Committed as much to memory as possible, and then read more.

There hadn't been much time to read more than textbooks during surgical training. Even less once he’d entered her majesty’s service.

Occasionally the blokes would pass around a tawdry novella no one would own up to buying, or a book of poems from some love left behind. Often read out loud and on the fly, he took what he could get between patrols and turns in the medical tents.

Until suddenly all he had was time, a hole through his shoulder, and a mind that played tricks on him. His constant companion had been books. His only escape from the fear of the uncertain and unknown future. The cheap spy thrillers, terrible historical romances, and an occasional, blessed, worn classic. Anything the nurses and aides were willing to share.

He'd been shipped back to London with a rucksack of necessities, a few tired jumpers, three decrepit paperbacks, and a service weapon he wasn't supposed to have.

He arrived at Baker Street in much the same sorry condition.

Somehow he’d managed to acquire a small collection of “nonsensical drivel" (according to Sherlock) and a few subscriptions to medical journals (he suspected Sherlock, but never had the nerve to ask). But life on Baker Street was frantic, and manic, and never quite as boring as Sherlock seemed to think it was, and there hadn't been much time for reading.

And then… Then.

He'd barely had the will to live himself after Sherlock… When he'd…

Even with Mary, he didn't. Couldn't. Reading was something one did if they wanted to live. To learn. To know something, or be someone more. And he didn't. Couldn't remember what it had been to feel that kind of alive. He simply didn't care.

And when Sherlock returned, it had all been too real. Too much life lived in too short a time. Too much emotional upheaval. Too much pain. Fear. Suffering. Hurt. Too much loss. Far too much change, and not enough time to process. Barely enough time to breathe.

Then he'd showed up at Baker Street with a rucksack of necessities, a few tired jumpers, the same old service weapon, and an infant.

Sherlock had filled a shelf of the new book case in the restored sitting room with a small library of the very spy thrillers he'd always mocked.

He hasn't read a single one.

He reads the medical journals that still mysteriously show up in his name. And the daily papers if there's time. He reads research for Sherlock, and “how to” blogs for not unintelligent (though often enough lacking common sense) grown men who are cluelessly raising a prepubescent daughter. A few cookbooks make the rotation. And a small stack of young adult literature, not so he can censor, never that, but so he can understand.

“John. _Come on_.” Sherlock charges into their bedroom. “What are you doing? This is no time for reading. Donovan won't hold the scene forever.”

“Never read this one.” He smiles up at Sherlock and shrugs.

“Of course you have. It's the one where the author clearly intends the reader to believe the daughter is the culprit, but it's obviously the neighbor. And the detective beds them both before revealing she's known the truth the whole time.” Sherlock waves his hand dismissively and pulls John's mobile from the tangle of yesterday's clothes shoved to the foot of the bed.

“Git.” John laughs. “Why read it if you hate it so much?”

Sherlock’s brow creases and he sniffs once. “It interests you.” He sniffs again and rushes to the door, letting the tips of his fingers just brush through John's hair. “Now. Come. On.”

John stands and tosses the book to the side table. He's never going to finish it.


End file.
